So you’re hiking a trail, have an assignment for a BPR writeup, and you’re about to head out. What can you do to make the writeup easier, with the most accurate information?
If you’re hiking a trail and have an assignment from BPR or you plan to pitch the route, we highly recommend taking notes, photos, and making sure you have a GPS track to send us. Even if you think you’ll remember everything about the trail, these notes will come in handy when you sit down to write it up. We also recommend reading through other profiles and getting familiar with the format before you take off.
Each Backpacking Routes trail profile follows a specific format. We want the readers to know what they’re getting when they click through to a trail. These include a downloadable GPS track, the basic stats of the trail, directions to the trailhead, resupply info, the hiking experience, and any oddities they should know about. It seems like a lot, but if you jot down notes on your phone or in a notebook along the way, we promise the write-up will be fun and come together easily. We also have a step-by-step writer’s guide to send over once you’ve been assigned to the trail.
We’re always looking for more amazing trails to profile and highlight. If you’re planning to hike a trail in the coming year and think it would be a good fit for BPR, shoot us an email or fill out the pitch form. More writing FAQs can be found here. Great examples from contributing writers can be found here, here, and here.
Frequent BPR contributor Katie Kommer also recommends starting a document with the profile outline before you leave, which she says helps her keep track of what information she should be noting. With all that in mind, here are our tips for when you’re hiking a trail and plan to write it up for Backpacking Routes.
1) Record a GPS track, or at least waypoints you’ll be able to connect later. All of our routes have a downloadable GPS track, and our team is a lot more likely to accept a trail when the writer has one to send over.
2) Drop a pin at each trailhead and remember how you got there: We have map links for each trailhead and information on the closest towns. Finding trailheads is one thing, but was it complicated to get there? If you had a shuttle, who did you use? Public transportation? What was the closest town? Did you leave your car at the trailhead, or did you have to park somewhere else? Quick notes on the logistics of arriving and departing are really important. If the trail is a point-to-point, how did you get back to your car?
3) Take notes while on the trail itself: These don’t have to be step-by-step instructions, but for the section on “hiking the XXX trail,” it’s nice to have a few paragraphs that chat about what the actual hike was like. If the trail started out with a few miles in the woods before breaking treeline and taking an intersection with another trail, jot that down when you sit down for a snack break, or at camp that night. I like to write a few bullet points about the day once I’m in my tent. Was the terrain hard? Were there lots of water crossings? Was one intersection particularly confusing?
4) Resupply notes for longer trails: Longer trails will have resupply info. Each time you hit a road to hitch into a town, or access a mail drop box, jot down the mileage, what the resupply was like, and how you got to town. That’s what I did for the Ouachita Trail and it was really helpful when I wrote the profile a few weeks later.
5) Other resource notes: These are the hard takeaways that set a BPR profile apart from less comprehensive or reliable information on the internet. We’ll want to know if water was readily available, what the camping situation was like, and if you need a permit for this trail. If the trail is permitted, how did you get the permit?
6) Any other special considerations: As you’re hiking, think about your gear. Did you take anything that really didn’t work for this trail? A trekking pole tent when a freestanding tent would have been better? Are bear canisters required? Was there a ton of poison ivy during one section? These notes will really round out your write-up and make it even more helpful for other people inspired to hike this trail.
